Ptuj City Tower, Ptuj

You cannot miss it when coming to Ptuj. If you want a great view over the tower, I suggest you go to the castle (apparently we can't go up the tower, or maybe not on the week-end...). There is a souvenir shop inside.

Really nice place in the center, renovated at least from the outside as it should be!

The city tower in Ptuj is the most powerful urban architecture, which strongly shapes the cityscape of the oldest Slovenian city. If we look at the city from the south side, the Ptuj veduta is shown crowned with a mighty castle complex, and the second most visible accent of the city veduta is a tall and massive tower, a symbol of the city's prestige and power. The city tower stands in the very center of the old city center on Slovenské trg. It was already built during the Gothic period, and it is specifically mentioned in the city statute from 1376. In 1556, the Ptuj city government ordered the Italian builder Antonio de Pivo to build a new tower on the site of the old tower. Originally, the tower rose to a height of five floors and was covered with a gable roof, but after a fire in 1705, the townspeople decided to lower it by one floor for safety reasons. At that time, the tower got a bulbous roof. In a fire in 1684, the bell tower of the neighboring city church (St. George's Church) burned down, and the church asked the city authorities for help in building a new one. She decided to donate the city tower to the church instead of renovating or building a new church bell tower. The tower is built of brick, and the floors are divided by stone cornices. There are also supporting lyzene (lyzene also called pilaster strip – a vertical virtual column on the wall or a pilaster-like wall band that has a dividing and supporting role) and semicircular openings that increase from floor to floor.

The City Tower dominates the skyline of Ptuj. In 1830, parish priest Simon Povoden installed various antique objects in the wall of the Gothic-style tower, thus creating the oldest Slovenian open-air museum, the Povodnov muzej.

Beautiful city tower!